(Historical note: I wrote this post on Wednesday and emailed it to myself in preparation to post it. Yes, I am addicted.)
/Ej/) If the metro people can persuade unionized workers to successfully maintain a functioning railway system by working four hours a night between 1:00 am and 5:00 am, it seems to me you could contrive to hammer at whatever it was you were hammering at and move whatever furniture you were moving OUTSIDE OF CLASS TIME. This bullshit is hard enough to concentrate on as it is. Hammer, hammer, whrrrrrrr, clump, hammer, hammer, hammer, drllllllll, clump, rattle, bang, hammer, hammer, hammer. I was ready to claw my own eyeballs out with a spoon. AAAGH!!!
/bi:/) I hated phonology, especially vowels. Okay fine. So I finish with that, forget about it for a year, then unsuspectingly take a dialectology course. That ends up being all about phonology. ESPECIALLY VOWELS. Argh.
/si:/) Why is it that academics feel the constant need to drop extracts of foreign languages I do not speak, untranslated, into all their papers? Is it just to keep us on our toes, or render them even more incomprehensible than they already are, or something? It’s not even always the same language:
I especially like the last sentence there. Nice irony. It goes on like this throughout the entire document. And I have to read this shit for credit.
This stuff is already dry enough to choke a goat. Why must life throw more obstacles in my path? sob
[sarcasm]
Oh, but if you don’t understand French, German, Latin, Greek (Koine and Attic), and Hebrew, you’re simply ineducable.
[/sarcasm]
Seriously, pester your teachers. Make them arrange it so you can understand your fucking assignments. Don’t trust Babelfish or other web-based translation services, because they happily mangle all but the most straightforward prose and are worthless when it comes to techincal matter. Investing in a good dictionary could be worthwhile, but it’s a pain to constantly refer to one.
I assume the symbols heading your paragraphs are somehow related to phonology. /bi:/ and /si:/ I think I understand (b+long i and s+long i, to produce ‘bye’ and ‘sigh’), but what does /ej/ come out to? ‘Edge’? ‘Eh’? I learned all I know about the subject from dictionary pronunciation guides and some minor linguistic research I’ve done, so I probably don’t know much.
matt_mcl - Boy, if you hate Phonology this much, don’t ever take Phonetics!! BTW, is dialectology a required class or were you unaware of what was going to be covered?
Monty - Good luck with your class. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. I loved Phonology.